Red Dragon is a novel by Thomas Harris, first published in 1981. It was the first novel to feature Harris' character Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The novel was adapted as a film, Manhunter, in 1986 which featured Brian Cox as Lecter. Directed by Michael Mann, the film was critically well received but fared poorly at the box office. It has since developed a cult following.

After Harris wrote a sequel to the novel, The Silence of the Lambs, in 1988 (itself turned into a highly successful film in 1991), Red Dragon found a new audience. A second sequel, Hannibal, was published in 1999 and adapted into a film in 2001. Both film sequels featured Anthony Hopkins in the role of Hannibal Lecter, for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1991. Due to the success of the second and third films, Red Dragon was remade as a film directed by Brett Ratner in 2002, this time bearing the title of the original novel and with Hopkins playing Lecter.

Plot

In 1980, a serial killer nicknamed "The Tooth Fairy" stalks and murders seemingly random families during sequential full moons. He first kills the Jacobi family in Birmingham, Alabama, then the Leeds family in Atlanta, Georgia. Two days after the Leeds murders, FBI agent Jack Crawford seeks out his protégé, Will Graham, a brilliant profiler who captured the serial killer Hannibal Lecter three years earlier, but retired after Lecter almost killed him.

Crawford goes to Graham's Sugarloaf Key residence and pleads for his assistance; Graham reluctantly agrees. Beverly Katz, Jimmy Price, Brian Zeller, and Dr. Alan Bloom also consult on the Red Dragon case for forensic and behavioral cues. After looking over the crime scenes with only minimal insight, he realizes that he must visit Lecter and seek his help in capturing the Red Dragon.